Apple-Facebook Friction Erupts Over Ping — If it is true that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, then Apple and Facebook ought to be friends. Their common enemy, of course, is Google. — But Apple's entry into social networking with the iTunes music social network Ping on Wednesday, has made them frenemies.

The Evolving Ecosystem — Just over four months ago, at Chirp, our Twitter developer conference, I talked about how “Twitter is too hard” and what we're doing to address that. — One major area of difficulty I highlighted was getting Twitter on your phone.

Apple's Ping succumbs to the spammers — New social network built inside iTunes fails to keep out the spammers, showing a curse of social media - even inside proprietorial walls — Apple chief Steve Jobs's trumpeting of the 160 million credit card holders on iTunes was a siren call to spammers.

YouTube Ads Turn Videos Into Revenue — SAN BRUNO, Calif. — Last month, a YouTube user, TomR35, uploaded a clip from the AMC series “Mad Men” in which Don Draper makes a heartfelt speech about the importance of nostalgia in advertising. — Viewers wouldn't notice, but that clip also makes …

Digg's Decline, Illustrated — Why does Digg have a new design and a new CEO? Here's one answer, via a handy chart. — This one comes from Christopher Mascari, a Gawker Media marketing guy, and it illustrates the blog network's traffic from social media sites.

Wave open source next steps: “Wave in a Box” — Since the announcement that we will discontinue development of Google Wave as a standalone product, many people have asked us about the future of the open source code and Wave federation protocol. After spending some time on figuring out our next steps …

iPod touch Is Close, But Still No Contract-Free iPhone — If you don't count the ol' iPod Classic, Apple completely revamped the iPod line yesterday at its annual music event. The Shuffle saw the return of buttons. The Nano is now a miniature multi-touch marvel that can apparently double as a fancy watch in a pinch.

Plex and LG to challenge Apple TV, Boxee, and others — Plex, for those not familiar, is a software company whose former creed was to: “bridge the gap between your Mac and your home theater, doing so with a visually appealing user interface that provides instant access to your media.”

Angry Birds arrives on the Android platform — iPhone smash hit broadens — One of the iPhone's biggest gaming hits has finally arrived on the Android platform, with Rovio Mobile's phenomenally addictive Angry Birds making the jump to a new platform in beta.

Vox is closing September 30, 2010 — Vox has been a fun place to explore, create and connect with your friends. But Vox is closing its doors on September 30, 2010. — This doesn't mean you have to say goodbye to your blog. We want you to make sure you can keep the great content you've shared on Vox …

In Defense of Links, part three: In links we trust … Nick Carr, like the rest of the “Web rots our brains” contingent, views links as primarily subtractive and destructive. Links direct us away from where we are to somewhere else on the Web. They impede our concentration, degrade our comprehension, and erode our attention spans.

an unwarranted bashing of Twitter's oAuth — Ryan Paul over at ArsTechnica claims a compromise of Twitter's oAuth system, but fails to demonstrate such a compromise. It's unfortunate, because some of his comments are indeed worthwhile, and there are a few interesting recommendations that Twitter should follow (hah, no pun intended).

PSD2 Compliance in Zoho Books — The Revised Payment Services Directive, also known as the PSD2, is a set of regulatory guidelines laid down by the European Union (EU) for finance, banking, and payment service companies.

Google Fi - a phone plan, by Google — We felt that most phone plans just weren't made with you in mind. So that's why we built Google Fi with features that real people actually want. Click to learn more.